they were called and that they did nothing. or we might find that despite 20/20 hindsight, the neighbors missed all the signs. mrs. kravitz, she would have known. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes, and thank you for joining us tonight. while president obama renewed his push for obamacare implementation today, you may or may not be shocked to hear what republicans were renewing for the 37th time. yes, the 37th time. an absolutely horrible week for jim demint and the heritage foundation ends on the most embarrassing note possible. i'll tell you why this is such a blow for the far right's immigration reform. because it is friday, we figured out a way to get ryan gosling into the show. you're welcome in advance.

but we begin with genuine abusive power by the federal government that sounds like it was cooked up by glen beck. i'm not kidding. if you sat down with glen beck over a pot brownie and asked him which nefarious plots the government was up to, this item from the news would probably be on the list. today the, today the irs revealed applying for exempt status. it came from the irs official that heads up the division on tax-exempt groups during a conference today sponsored by the american bar association. >> they used names like tea party or patriots, and they selected cases simply because the application had those names in the title. that was wrong, that was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. that's not how we go about selecting cases for further review. we select them for further review because they need further review, not because they have a particular name. >> that stark and damaging omission this morning was

followed by a disastrous conference call with the press in which that same irs official who did, i thought, a very good job in that statement declared, quote, i'm not good at math. to be fair, the point she was trying to make is while she is a high-ranking irs official, she isn't a lawyer or an accountant. it was an inauspicious day for the obama administration's irs. based on trigger words in their names is truly scandalous. i'm standing before you today as a liberal saying, it's not okay, guys, not okay. these reviews were not moetd moet vatd bipartisan returns. it was part of a broader advocacy seeking proper status. i hope the irs doesn't back offer criticizing all political stripes going forward. but at the i understand of the d -- end of the day, this is one of those real serious no-nos of

political life. as the aclu correctly pointed out today, inn the appearance of playing partisan politics with the tax code is about as constitutionally troubling as it gets. if we were watching the john mccain/sarah palin terrorist groups who had occupy in their names, anyone sitting here on this network would be raising hell and rightly so. the tea party, which could have been one of the groups targeted, demanded resignations. it's totally reasonable to expect that from them given the gravity of the news. but my favorite reaction came from the rival tea party express saying dave wag he will, quote, just like with benghazi, the truth comes out after the election. just like benghazi. they can't help themselves. even when they have evidence of misdeeds and malfeasance, they still want to refer to the scandal they've had month after

month. a big, bad, scary government scandal which, myself included, is something worth investigation, and they still want to come back to the benghazi conspiracy theories. apparently they manufactured so much into the benghazi outrage, they are physically incapable of backing away from it. now they're reviewing a real world abuse of scandal, not as a means of outrage but as a means of supporting their witch hunt on benghazi. which they struggled to turn into a scandal in large part because they can't seem to settle on what the scandal even is. it's a cover-up, just don't ask what's being covered up. today's edition of the pinball narrative saw a focus on the cia talking points used by susan rice in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. the reason rice was going nuts on those talking points eight months after the fact is thanks

to a new detail on abc news that those were revised 12 times and edited before they arrived on the sunday shows. they were made with input from the state department, and at least one of those edits was apparently designed to make it harder for members of congress to, quote, beat up the state department. in other words, some people working inside the government and in politics edited some talking points to protect themselves politically. and if that is a scandal in washington, then every single blackberry is a d.c. crime scene. it should not come as a surprise that republicans are trying to drive the new cycle into a frenzy over the full cycle they've been trying to manufacture over the benghazi talking points for months now. the real question is why are they making a big deal over the fake benghazi scandal than they are the real scandal over the irs having targeted certain groups? and the answer to that question is very telling. the irs scandal is an obama administration scandal, the one that centered around our current president. the scandal they're turning

around benghazi they're threatening who is becoming the next president. they said hillary clinton should never hold high office again, doing that thing where he states the subtext for the whole affair. this is a forward-thinking scandal. that's why republicans are so attached to it. >> what i think is sad is how many people are around the administration, including the former secretary of state. secretary hillary clinton knew this to be the case and moved forward, anyway. >> and now there is a movement for hillary clinton. >> i think hillary clinton is a central focus in this scandal. >> the circle of lies that hilary built is all coming crumbling down. >> what benghazi means for hillary clinton's presidential hopes. >> at this point, what difference does it make? >> it could make a very big difference for someone who could well be the democratic nominee. >> participating in a cover-up is very dangerous stuff for a

politician running for office. >> hillary clinton way out in front for the democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and it's hers if she wants it. right now the only negative on her current resume is the murder of the american ambassador in libya. >> this is not about politics. this is about accountability. >> the fact that republicans cannot seem to find a genuine scandal in the benghazi attacks is not going to stop them from trying. not as long as they see it as a potential weapon to be used against hillary clinton. joining me tonight, robin wright in the woodrow wilson center. she's also the author of "rock the casbah" and the reporter for "newsweek" and the daily beast. i want to start with your reaction of the news today. it seemed to me a classic bureaucratic battle between the two elements of government, the state department and the cia wrestling over what was being

told, it seemed to me each one pointing the finger@othe at the other. pointing fingers is a fairly mundane and common quality. >> it's common, but it also reflects a basic truth, and that is that the fog of terrorism is as bad as the fog of war. to expect within fife days to have all the answers of what happened in benghazi, who was responsible, was totally unrealistic. this did happen in the climate of other attacks first at the american embassy in cairo and later in the same period. this seemed part and parcel of the controversy over a film by an egyptian who was living in the united states that was particularly controversial in the eyes of muslims. and so in trying to sort out what happened, what was different, who was responsible for each of the specific attacks, benghazi got lumped in with the broader kind of crisis, the alienation over this film. and then it played out as well

in the interagency process which has been plagued whether republicans or democrats are in power. >> eli, i want to ask you about a great bit of reporting you had on the daily beast in a second, but what i'm saying is the most cynical interpretation of events, which really this is just about tarnishing hillary clinton. i have to say that there are elements of the story if you get into the weeds, it seems like there were decisions that were made that were maybe not the best decisions in retrospect. it also seems like there was information that was insufficient or even wrong, but it's very hard for me on a good faith to view this as something other than essentially a big project to go after hillary clinton. >> well, clearly there was in competence, there was inadequate security in benghazi and not very good intelligence. but it was positive lliticized that has cost the united states anything in libya.

people have lost sight of what happened on the ground in libya as a result of this focus on the attack in benghazi. he was trying to rebuild libya and find a positive role for the united states, in recreating a state ruled by an autocrat for 14 years. nobody is paying attention to the sdis integradisintegration . >> you are essentially vetting the local militia that was tasked with providing security for the facility that was attacked. you have a quote in it that i thought was fascinating, because there is kind of a spy games aspect to this whole thing and a hard-to-put-your-finger on misdirection that seemed to shroud the whole thing from the beginning, and what comes across in your article is a line in which you have someone saying, this was a cia operation with a diplomatic cover. this was cia operating a

diplomatic cover. this was not actually really a consulate. >> that's right, because the cia, there were more cia officers in the actual so-called alleged consulate than there were real state department employees. this goes back to if i could provide some systemic opening, i do believe that -- scandal is a pejorative word, but i think in the fog of terrorism, to use robin wright's fine phrase, why did the administration cling tie story about a protest in a video when gregory hicks just told congress under oath that he told hillary clinton at 2:00 a.m. when she called him for that 2:00 a.m. phone call that it was an attack and it was terrorism and almost everybody on the ground believed that. i think that deserves scrutiny. >> here's the thing i love about the talking points. the point you made, which is the point that was -- this was the first scandal before we got to the africom decision not to send

the special forces helicopter, before we got to the talking points, the first scandal was susan rice protesting about the video. what i find fascinating about the points today is that the first item in the talking points basically says that. it says this came about from spontaneous protest inspired by the u.s. embassy protests in cairo. and that one element which was agreed to by everyone internally never gets denied by anyone, right? so that actually lets off the hook the first theory of what the scandal was here. just to be clear. >> fair enough, but i have a question. why did the cia or whoever wrote that first briefing say that when it looks like nobody in libya thought that there was ever a protest and nobody in libya believed that this was anything but a terrorist attack, and in the original reports, you know, were murky, and i agree, there is a fog of terrorism, but

if you don't know much in the aftermath as i think a fair point to make, why go with one kind of theory over another? we're trying to figure it out. >> eli, that's exactly my point and that's what i find fascinating about it. look, the entire thing read to me was state and cia literally warring over who was going to be holding the bag on this, right? >> sure. >> that was really what it looked like to me. what was so fascinating is you say in the fog of terrorism, you don't know what's going on. what happens in the course of these talking points is they go from more information to less information, and i could see myself making the judgment that, yes, when there is real confusion about what's true, say less rather than more because you're going to have to defend what you say. >> with all due respect, i think this administration and other administrations, to be fair as well, when there are attacks like this, they have gone out of their way to, in many ways, try to minimize it. i find that to be actually kind of a paradox, because i find

obama talks like a religion confessor and talks like blackwater in that he has kind of an enormous kind of secret war throughout the muslim world. but when he talks about these things and when there is a kind of attack, you know, we often hear -- i would call it a kind of sugar-coated version of things. >> what you just said there strikes me as kind of the core here, the burning flame of this, was always this idea that somehow this was underplayed because there was not the initial invocation of al qaeda or jihades. he said it was never an act of terror and yet he said it was an act of terror, but that seems to be the elemental thing driving this from the beginning, that there was some rhetorical mistake here. i don't actually quite understand why that matters. >> well, look, the cia had intelligence that there were al qaeda cells that were in benghazi. and the attempt to kind of cover

it up concerns us all. why not put that on the table, that there could have been many different theories? and the obama administration did corner itself by sticking to one version of events. and that's a problem for everybody now, and it's going to come to haunt, i think, hillary clinton in 2016, and it's a real tragedy because there are a lot of other issues out there. we're getting so caught up in the past -- >> but it's going to haunt her, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. it's like saying whitewater haunts her. it's going to haunt her because people are going to talk about it, but you have to actually nail down the thing that she did that was wrong, and i still haven't been given a persuasive case of what that is. >> and one of the issues is how far does the chain of command go up? clearly the buck ends with her, but at what point was she brought into it? at what point did she know what al qaeda cells were operating in benghazi? the fact is there was a lot of incompetence inside libya as

well. the fact the duty officer was watching his favorite television show and missing two calls from chris at a time when he was under attack, there is a lot of things that have come out of this testimony that people haven't paid enough attention to. you can share the blame with a lot of different players, not just at the cia or the state department in washington, but what was happening in libya, too. >> robin wright, have a great weekend, both of you. wait until you get a load of what john boehner announced today. it's de javu for the 20th time all over again. that's next. s of others. let's get started at capella.edu. with the bing it on challenge to show google users what they've been missing on bing. let's bing it on. [fight bell: ding, ding] how many here are google users?

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following up on a story more accurately, a national movement we've been keeping in our eyes. in detroit, michigan today workers staged what may be the largest strike by fast food employees in american history. we have a report on this massive job action on our website.

you have to check out the incredible story when one store tried to hire replacement workers. base pay raised to $15 an hour. they said they plan to strike throughout the summer, and you bet we will be following them. stay with us. e to golf. i love to golf. ♪ [ grunts ] yowza! that's why i eat belvita at breakfast. it's made with delicious ingredients and carefully baked to release steady energy that lasts... we are golfing now, buddy! [ grunts ] ...all morning long. i got it! for the win! uno mas! getting closer! belvita breakfast biscuits -- steady energy to do what i do all morning long. belvita breakfast biscuits -- we believe it can be the most valuable real estate on earth. ♪

that's why we designed our newest subaru from the back seat forward. introducing the all-new, completely restyled subaru forester. love. it's what makes a subaru, a subaru. today president obama was out touting the concrete benefits of the affordable care act in honor of mother's day. >> for three years now, this law has provided real and tangible

benefits to millions of americans. women in particular now have more control over their own care than ever before. >> the president's speech came just a day after john boehner announced another report for obamacare. this one for all the new guys. >> we have 70 new members that have not had the opportunity to vote on the president's health care law. frankly, they've been asking for an opportunity to vote on it and we're going to give it to them. >> then just get it done. boehner, however, was not done handing out red meat yesterday. he and mayor mcconnell respectfully declined to represent members to the advisory board, a group to contain medical spending, lovingly referred to by those on the right as obama's death panel. if it strikes you as odd or comical or even in kind of a way sad and pathetic that the house is taking up obamacare repeal for the 37th time, take a moment to put yourself in their shoes. the last four or five years, republicans, particularly those in the house, have had two main

objections. to destroy obama and make sure he is a one-term president, a ship that has now sailed, and to impose austerity. they clearly need to go to work every morning, the few days they do actually go to work which is diminishing. they can't stop aside from benghazi. it's all they have left. joining me now, president and ceo of american progress. she is in charge of health reform at the health services organization. do you have a bet how this obamacare is going to go down? is there a lot of suspense in washington, d.c.? >> i have this funny feeling it might pass the house, but oddly enough, i don't think the president is going to sign it. >> in all seriousness, the ipad thing to me drives me nuts. i know it's a little wonky, the independent payment advisory

board -- >> i'm happy to wonk out. >> let's do, then, because it's an important item and it reveals something politically that drives me crazy. there are lots of talk about long-term deficits, and they're driven by our health care spending, and the independent advisory board san interesting way to get experts together who compare the way treatments are given saying, hey, this works and this doesn't, and that, which is a cost containment method, has been the thing republicans have gone at as hard as anything in the bill. >> it's not just the ipad. the great irony of the act is the republicans who championed for decades ways to save money in the health care system turned it around on a dime and called all efforts to save money in health care before the affordable health care act rationing health care. not only that, death panels, the whole panoplea of language they could use to destroy these efforts to help control cost.

one could argue that it's in service of a broader strategy to dismantle medicare itself. these efforts in the affordable care act save money but they maintain medical care. instead what republicans have argued for is to have premium support on other strategies that actually undermine the medicare program and take away these actual initiatives that will maintain medicare as it is but save money for everyone else. >> i want to read from this letter because i think it does a good job of distilling down the problem that republicans say they have. we write to respond to your march 29, 2013 letter requesting that we submit the names of the individuals, blah, blah, blah. because the law will give the ibap's 15 unelected, unaccountable individuals the ability to deny seniors access to innovative care, we respectfully decline to

recommend appointments. this says seniors should get treatment no matter how effective, no matter how much it costs forever. that is the position that is embodied in those words. >> yes. while at the same time they want to dismantle the medicare program and turn it over to private insurers who will shift costs to seniors. one could argue that it's actually in service of a broad strategy undermining medicare because it's not really about actually giving seniors more choices in medicare. the irony of this whole thing is the ipad itself actually moves it out of government bureaucrats making this decision and gives it to experts, doctors, consumers, you know, patient advocates to actually look at why there is too much spending in the medicare system. >> i want to ask you this question. if we got in a time machine to two or three years ago when you were inside the administration and we had an interview off the record, we weren't on television, but you were being honest -- >> i'm always honest.

>> of course. so if i said to you then, look ahead three years, where are you going to be politically? where is this bill going to be politically in terms of people's recognition of its tangible benefits? are we where you thought we would be? are you below? has the bill not seeped into the american consciousness as much as you thought it would, or is it about where you thought it would be? >> well, you know, at the time that we went through the affordable care act, it was entirely clear that there were public ends launching the full effect of dismantling the law. what we've seen over the last couple of years is that when they haven't been able to use politics, they've used the courts to try to dismantle the law. now their essential strategy is to create so much confusion that people won't enroll in the health care exchanges in the coming months. so at the time i'm perhaps a little surprised that republicans have been so dogged

for so long. i did think perhaps they would revert to their previous position of supporting things like reducing health care costs, et cetera, but they were a party that gives you death panels is really a party that's going to commit to assaulting the law for long term, and that's going to be a challenge for all of us who believe in making this law work. we have our work cut out for us, but we definitely have the opportunity now to inform people about what the exchanges are. the meat of the law is actually coming on now. the rubber is hitting the road over the next couple months. everything else has really been, you know, small steps compared to what's about to happen which is really the premise of coverage to 30 million americans, if not more. and that's why, you know, we really have to roll up our sleeves and kind of try and get through the fog that the conservative opposition has created. >> thank you so much for your time tonight. >> thank you. up next, i'll tell you why a

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yesterday the republicans with very little fanfare took a vote that strikes me as complete and total political suicide. the vote was on the full faith and credit act, which is a republican attempt to essentially strengthen their bl bluffing position in their latest effort to blow up the

economy with the effort of slamming the debt ceiling. in order to take off the edge they will bring with the apocalypse, republicans are saying, no, no, no, not financial apocalypse. >> there is one thing that could do even more damage than delaying payments on our other bills, and that is the threat of a default on our sovereign debt. this measure takes that threat off the table. >> oh, but not true. even if this bankruptcy-like payment scheme worked as republicans claim, the country would still go into default which is why economists have called possible efforts of paying some creditors over others the financial equivalent of that bosch painting of hell and while chris holland called the creditor act a hare-brained idea. here's how the republicans want to decide who gets paid. social security recipients and

bond holders. and if there's any money left, that could go to everyone else, that being active service duty members, city health inspectors, nothing important, mind you. but house speaker john boehner is not concerned about that. >> you're basically saying you'll pay china before you pay u.s. troops? >> those who loaned us money, like in any other proceeding, if you will, court proceeding, the bond holders usually get paid first. same thing here. >> and you're not worried about the politics of this. >> not at all. >> the bond holders get paid first, to which stenny hoyer said just yesterday speaker boehner admitted this bill means the united states will voluntarily act like a bankrupt corporation and pay china before we pay our troops. not only misleading, it's not just chit knees who own american

bonds, most debt is held by ourselves, including state and local governments. nearly 60% of debt is held by external debt, china being the biggest holder. there are also oil exporters, caribbean bankers and oil. john boehner says he cares about seniors. then why did he vote to send checks to saudi princes instead of medicare recipients? or -- eric canter voted to pay china before our own troops. whose side is on he, anyway? or paul ryan. he wants to send barrels of cash to russian fat cats while you eat tainted mad cow beefburgers. tell paul ryan those aren't our values. my favorite thing about this bill is this. i have never seen a purer distill lags of the republican party than this bill. just like any bankruptcy proceeding, the bond holders get paid first. that should be the motto for the republicans in the midterm elections. bond holders get paid first.

who is the republican base? it's old folks on social security and bond holders. if you want to talk about what is the moderate republican party, it is a creature based on social security and a financial base of bond holders. that is the party we're talking about. and they just went to the floor of the house of representatives and said, you know what? when the bleep hits the fan, our people get taken care of, so screw the rest of you. we'll be right back with click 3. are you still sleeping? just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule.

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heckler. it shows children tasting all kinds of foods for the first time. the reactions range from terrified to downright disgusted. this becomes the most incredible lemon tasting you have ever seen. and while the majority of these on-camera assessments are unmistakably kid-like, i'm guessing most adults would have the same reaction if they, too, were force-fed vegemite. the most awesome thing on the internet comes from the website dead spin. this map shows that your state's highest paid employee is most likely a high school football coach or basketball coach. in fact, only ten states in the nation shown here in blue have top earners who do something other than coaching sports. they collected data from media special reports and state salary databases. he found the highest paid were

27 football coaches, 37 basketball coaches and one hockey coach, in new hampshire, of course. the bulk of the money for these salaries comes from the revenues these teams generate. it's a fascinating look at the world of college sports and the power coaches have to draw big salaries. and the third awesomest thing is the internet says, dude, do this. this is ryan gosling far surpassing hey girls. paul ryan gosling, anyone, remember that one? this is ryan gosling won't eat your cereal. as entertainment weekly puts it, just a spoonful of sugar inching toward gosling's beautiful but sometimes tortured face. the idea came for him tr watching the film "drive" and eating cereal. it does prompt the question, if

ryan gosling won't eat his cereal, why didn't he just offer it to that poor kid suffering through a lemon. we'll be right back.

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been. especially for the heritage foundation. the weekends when organizations release bad news on a friday with the hope we'll all just forget it over the weekend. the heritage foundation today accepted the resignation of jason ridgewine. he is the co-author of the now infamous heritage study which kicked off this week to great fanfare, a post that argued a reform bill would cost a whopping $6.3 trillion. from the words of ridgewine, it represents the fiscal costs of house holds after amnesty. the heritage foundation thought the study could sink the heritage bill, that is, until republicans who supported the bill summarily conducted the study calling it politically and wild ld overblown, but it turned out the most controversial thing about the study wasn't the number, it was the past writings of the co-author of jason ridgewine. the wonkblog actually went back and pulled ridgewine's diss

dissertation which said the average iq of immigrants in the united states is substantially lower than that of the white native population. it's a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-iq immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and nn kraan increase in proportion of unskilled workers in the american labor market. he has decided that immigrants are just not as smart as whites, but the fact they will have b h low-iq children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against. he wrote in 2010 for

alternativeright.com in an article entitled model minority, question mark, he pushed back the notion that they have pushed up the crime rate of hispanics. he said hispanics are substantially more likely than whites to commit serious crimes and u.s.-born hispanics in particular about two and a half times more likely. this discovery precipitated huge backlash by conservatives. but it was written that it's an unpleasant reminder that sincere opponents of reform should distance themselves. then there was this super-awkward exchange when heritage foundation mike gonzalez went on the radio yesterday to defend its study and its co-author ridgewine. are y >> are you standing by the premise that hispanics have low iq? >> no, that's not our position. >> so why is he an author in your study? >> he did the number crunching,

like he said. >> so you have someone who is a racist, obviously, right, who is part of your study, you're accepting his work, therefore, you're accepting his intellectual framework, right? >> we do not accept the work that he did before arriving here. >> are you going to fire him or are you standing by him? >> we really -- you know, i don't want to comment on that. >> well, spoiler alert, if you had dvred this, jason ridgewhite is no longer employed by the heritage foundation. the senator of change came out and called on the head of heritage foundation to resign during the wake of this scandal. wait a second. the heritage foundation is a big organization, and it's not like demint has time to go around holding a press conference specifically supporting the study ridgeline co-authored. >> we contend particularly after this study that amnesty is unfair to those who come here

lawfully and those who are waiting. it will cost the american taxpayer trillions of dollars over the next several decades, and it will make our immigration problems worse. >> your playing six degrees of white nationalist, that means you're getting to jim demint in just two steps. up next i'll talk to the leader of the group trying to make sure demint is the next person to tender his resignation, and we'll hear from someone who thinks the heritage foundation threw jim ridgewine under the bus. stay with us.

a correction to last night's commentary how the amount of carbon you're putting in. thanks for your kprent coverage of carbon build-up and the crisis of global warming on last night's show. as a paleontologist, i appreciated your comments on the

warm pliocene, but lest some climate change doubters protest that if woolly math moms could make it in the hot pliocene, why worry now about polar bears, i felt compelled to mention that those hairy booeeasts evolved later. if you want to contact us, you can go to our facebook page. christina says, it's quite possible i'm a wee bit obsessed. her sharpie graffiti intercepted with our hash tag. we'll be right back. we're all totally different. ishares core. etf building blocks for your personalized portfolio. find out why 9 out of 10 large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus, which includes

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right now i want to bring in from washington, d.c. the director for change. he is leading the charge to have jim demint fired from the heritage foundation.

and joining me, shika, analyzer. shika, i want to start with you because you're someone broadly in the middle of the coalition and watching this civil war, if that's the word, unfold between different aspects of the collision over reform is simply a policy and immigration more broadly as a kind of touchstone issue. so i'm curious what your reaction is to the news tonight that jason ridgewine has parted ways with heritage. >> my feelings on immigration is we should let everybody in as long as they don't pose a criminal or health threat. i think the heritage foundation has thrown jason ridgewine under the bus, as you mentioned, because he didn't do anything wrong over here as far as they are concerned. he was not cagey about his work. the title of his dissertation is

immigration in i.q. he was an american enterprise institute before he was at heritage where he had been involved in panel discussions where he had very articulately said what his views were, and he had written for various web sites despite his position on immigration and i.q., and he was at heritage, i imagine, because of his expertise on this issue. i don't understand what he has done. i think views are so transparent at heritage. >> there are plenty of women phds in america. i guess this guy has an infamous bell curve so he has a dubious

parentage. >> charles murray tweeted today, thank goodness i was at aei when i wrote the bell curve, and then talking about how brave they were to publish it. so continue. >> the issue wasn't that he was fired, the issue was that he was hired knowingly by heritage with these views out of the ma mainstream by the pillar of conservatism of america. this wasn't just some obscure study off to the side, this was jim demint's coming out party with the new muscular heritage. so for them to have done this and then resisted and waited days and days, and with the cover of darkness without fully owning up to the republic rehen points of view. >> i've done a lot of reporting on this issue and i'm going to play devil's advocate on behalf of what they call themselves our immigration restrictionists.

immigration restrictionists say you liberals, you always try to caricature us as liberalists. they're sons of african-americans, this is not about race, and you want to jump at any opportunity you get to try to paint us as racists because you refuse to talk about the whereal issues. what do you say about that, tupac? >> let me be clear it is impossible to have a view on this immigration bill or other immigration bills and not be a racist in america. it is absolutely impossible. it is also true there is a deep vein of racial anamis that have been on the side of the passions for decades that is kind of at the fringes of the discourse that you see at town hall meetings, letter to the editors, talk radio. in a way what this has illustrated is how deep that vein goes. it's not everybody who opposes

em gra immigration, but a big driver in this debate has been animosity. it really pans out to the conservative american. >> as part of this kind of in intra-center right. who is winning this fight and what do they say about the viability intellectually within the conservative movement of the restrictionist case? >> going back to your first question, it is true that it is possible to make a non-racist restrictionist case. not all restrictionists are racist, but too many racists are restrictionists, and i think that's where the problem is over here. from my point of view, i had huge problems with the heritage study. this was, by the way, not a new study, this was an updated version of an old 2007 study, and its methodology has always been, you know, highly disputed. one of the things that they don't do is dynamic scoring,

which means they count the tax burden off immigrants but they don't count productive methodology. they count it as american-born children of hispanics as costs but then they don't factor into the taxes they're going to contribute when they grow up. and i think in my view, this is a fortuitous side effect of this whole controversy, so i'm more hopeful we'll get a better, you know, bill, because we don't have to be distracted by the study anymore. >> tupac, do you hold out any hope of a meeting with her tita to talk this all over? >> they've chosen to go into a

bunker. the heritage act of 2007 played a major role in bringing down immigration reform. they embraced the arguments, the data. this time the republican establishment has run away from the report as fast as possible. >> thank you very much. that is all for this evening. the rachel mad dow show starts now. good evening, rachel. >> good evening, and happy friday. happy friday to you as well. president barack obama was elected president of the united states in november of 2008. he was sworn into office january of 2009. you might remember, and it was kind of a big deal, it was kind of a big day in washington, the largest crowds ever to turn out to see a u.s. president sworn in. that was january 2009. ♪ >> by march 2009, the right wing in america just couldn't take it